Chapter Eleven
Suspicions
Crystal McGee, having spent Alpha and much of Beta Shifts with the goal of getting to know as well as possible as many crew persons and families as she can, her flock, while avoiding the battles raging on various decks of the massive starship, steps into the lounge. This, from where she can see of the diverse crowd, looks to be the place and the simplest way to meet the most people, especially when there's to be but one topic of most conversations. Rather than wandering the ship as she'd been doing, she could just stay here.
No, she can't. Beyond meeting people and having little taste for war games she had managed to avoid, she was also getting the lay of the land, or rather the ship. She's been to several floors - decks - and has determined to meet as many of the crew as was possible before she takes up the planning of her next stage, offering actual non-denominational Services as much as it is physically possible to prepare for before she takes on the non-human Faiths.
She has learned the essentials of the Holodeck from Crewwoman Patti Devlin and decided it will be much easier, and perhaps more impressive, to use that site rather than to move furniture in Mooska's Bar or this Lounge.
A look under the tables as she approaches a vacant one confirms this. While the chairs are not bolted to the deck as they are in Mooska's, the tables are.
Petty Officer Miguel Riviera had suggested the Launch Bay. She admits the background would be as impressive as he – heck – until she gets used to looking out her own quarters or office windows, there is no way she will be comfortable enough to use the huge bay with that vista behind her. She must still fight her fear, hopefully diminishing, of being thrown out an air lock.
No, the Holodeck will be fine. Does she have to reserve the time? Good to check. Maybe she might be able to reserve an hour each Sunday morning at 1000, and then go by others as needed.
She'd been told by Lt. Vaolastorcugrky – Dann – at the Reception (and this time she hadn't felt an urge to scream) that he's the go-to officer for elevator music. Does he also schedule Holodeck time? She should have asked him. He'd seemed charming, though in a ninstrudle sort of way, but that would be convenient. She already has the names of 231 selections for Christmas music; that part had been easy, though she's determined there will be no red nosed reindeer or magic top hats on the day.
Maybe the Eve. She'll ask later.
x
She'll start small with the Services. She has no idea how many will come for more than the novelty. The Christmas / Easter participants have been a staple for two and a half millennia, she knows she'll never change it, and She begins her career here in hope.
'Her career here.' Did She actually think that this time? Yes? Well, maybe…. Hope?
x
She knows the day will come when she will succumb to temptation and offer Services in Notre Dame or the Chartres Cathedral (maybe for its 1200th Anniversary? She should look it up) or most likely of all standing where her eight time great-grandmother had stood as Bishop in the National Cathedral in Washington, America.
But this ship has known Time Travel, at least from outside in. She'd heard the story from Crewman Bill Parsons aboard the Tesla of Pria Levesque, one of the few actual stories she has of her new berth. Wouldn't it be something to do that, to somehow go back, to meet the original Mother McGee?
'No,' she'd immediately decided. 'Dreams are one thing, fantasies another and fun, but if it happened I'd probably stand there like a cross-wired cyborg and really disappoint her about the prospects for her line.'
x
That is why she's in the bar cum lounge in search of a quiet spot in which to think through the events of the day, not to indulge herself in fantasies.
The chairs and tables, the latter bolted to the deck, are laid out in a simple pattern. Unlike Mooska's, while there is a well stocked bar along the long wall, food is synthesized at the device at the short wall and not served up by an enthusiastic host.
There are small tables set on a raised level and each before one of several windows for more intimate gatherings, but she'll work up the nerve to sit so close to rushing rainbows of galactic matter later.
She had limited herself to casual random encounters with the crew and families, recognizing from minute one that this self-appointed 'acquaintance quest' will take days at best. With a three-shift day, roughly one third of the people will be on duty at any particular hour, the second third will likely be asleep while the rest will be on their wind down evenings.
Should she pick a Shift for herself? Will she be assigned one or will the circumstances force one upon her? In plain English, does she even have a choice?
She has no assigned duties beyond those of her Calling and Appointment other than those she gives to herself, and is so glad that the ship is heading first to deliver seeds to an agricultural colony, then in a direction she continually thinks of as 'South' to parts very much unknown. It will be months before they encounter a known species or another Union ship.
It's exciting to think that in this day and age (shouldn't that be age and day?) there is still such need for pure exploration, and she can take her time to adjust and learn.
Yesterday she'd been a wreck, certain she was going to F up so badly that she would be put off the ship. But in chatting up Lt. Mara Dacaran, the Astrogator, she'd realized that not too long from now, at normal cruising speed, they would soon reach the point where there will be nowhere to put her off to. All she has to do is avoid messing up before that point and she'll be relatively secure.
Unless, of course, she F's up so badly that they do blow her out an airlock.
x
'Brilliant, idiot. Spend,' she searches out, finds the chronometer on the wall, 'ten and a half hours convincing yourself everything will be fine, then muck it up before you sit down.'
She does sit down, feeling not at all as good as when she'd entered the lounge, but she does take a very useful lesson from Trinity Seminary and closes her eyes, tilts her head back until the overhead light is brightest and replays the time she'd spent in the ship's Schoolroom.
There are two classes of children, of students on this ship, the adolescents and the very young, 4 to 6 years old and the latter was the one she'd visited, breaking her own rule not to intrude on 'on duty' personnel. The room was filled with young people from six different planets, but today, though introduced, she'd placed only one, Topa, Lt. Cmdr. Bortus' young man.
The pre-noon is devoted to the youngest, before their active minds can wander in every direction of the spherical compass. She'd introduced herself to the teacher, Mr. Javier Cassius, but said she hadn't wanted to intrude on the class.
He'd turned it around and introduced her to the boys and girls and, knowing she could hardly have a presentation ready for their young minds, though she had decided she would speak to him in due time about Religious education, asked them if they had any questions.
One little girl, perhaps no more than five, had raised her hand more quickly and higher than her fellows, and had asked "What's a Chapman?"
Fifty minutes and perhaps eighty questions later she'd managed to come up for air.
She'd asked Mr. Cassius about coming back, got a deafening affirmative before the man could open his mouth and made a graceful exit, determined to review every lesson she'd ever learned all the way back to St. Alphonsus.
x
Opening her eyes, feeling much better, she sees Lieutenants Alara Kitan and Gordon Malloy seated in profile to her a few tables away and determines she is not going to intrude, not when seeing how he holds both her hands in his.
They're out of uniform - it must be later than she'd realized - he in a blue shirt and she in a yellow blouse embroidered with what are probably Xelayan symbols or words, together with a blue skirt she's sure must be within the bounds of regulations - somewhere. The gift he'd given her, the 'tal-med', flashes its tiny colors at her throat.
They both seem quite focused on solitude in the quarter filled room, so she stands up and continues her path.
xxx
On the bridge the Beta Shift crew have replaced their Alpha counterparts. Ensign Sportelli, consigned to alternate double shifts with the Gamma Shift Navigator for the foreseeable future, has stayed in her post next to Beta Shift Pilot Ens. Joe Klugmann's left while the other officers had switched.
The ship is headed for Earth at the top speed of its Quantum Drive and unless the Captain decides to hold another series of drills not much is going to change in the next 16 hours.
"Any idea what's up?" Klugmann asks.
Officer of the Watch Lieutenant Carl M'Goya looks up high from his center starboard chair. "Shielded port they used to call a 'Sun roof', stars and loads of stellar detritus making some very pretty rainbow streaks, some distant stars I could pass the time creating new constellations from."
"Serves me right. I was thinking more why the mad dash back to Earth."
"I'm not mad." He looks right to Mark Rosen at Environmental. "You mad?"
"Nope."
"Well, all I know," Klugmann counters, "is that when I went off duty at zero we were on our way to Catonis II on what I thought was an emergency and I come back and we've done a 163 stroke 137 and are headed for Earth. Luna, actually."
"The day we're privy to anything big…." Peter Belknap, the Communications Officer, leaves it hanging for M'Goya to pick up. If anyone is up to date on things it would be the shift boss but
"Don't look at me. Captain didn't say a word so I'm assuming it's beyond my pay grade."
"You know what happens when you 'assume'," Rosen says.
"'You make an ass of you and me', yeah, but by what I saw the Captain was pissed about something, and I'm perfectly content not to set him off. What's our ETA?"
"0853," Sportelli says.
"Then it's not our problem until the old man says it is."
x
"So," M'Goya asks his team, "how many died today?" to which the pilot and communications officer raise their hands. "How was it?"
"A headache," Klugmann gripes, surprising most with the depth of his feeling.
"How so?"
"I caught sight of Ben Joswig, one of the Security / Boarder guys coming down the corridor but he didn't see me. I was all set to get the drop on him when Sara Genuardi came up behind me and gave me two to the back of the head."
"Should'na stood her up last week," Louisa chides.
"I didn't stand her up, I had to work a double and I was exhausted."
"So you say." Louisa has worked her share of doubles and then some opposite Klugmann but isn't inclined to use it for any gain. This is the start of her Official shift rather than the split of her 16 hours, something she would not have had to do had Chief LaMarr been able to spend any time up here.
x
Normally the off shifts have little to do, all the excitement seems to happen during Alpha. But then, when things do get dicey it's usually Mercer and the A Team that get called in anyway.
No, that's not fair. Only in extreme situations does Mercer call in the Alpha Shift. Usually the B team can handle the unexpected, but that's always the Captain's call.
She hopes it doesn't happen this evening. The Captain seems to have a bug on.
In fact, and it has to be the tensions of their somewhat clandestine mission, she might think of the old man's behavior as erratic – if she weren't holding on for that much coveted Promotion.
A score of doubles are worth that.
x
"Mr. Belknap?"
"I don't even know who got me, Cappy. I rounded a corner and came face to PMs with Marty Tate and Lou Holder and they both opened up on me. I thought we were only supposed to be shot once."
"No promises."
"What about you?"
"I wasn't selected."
Not for anything will M'Goya admit his untimely and extremely uncomfortable demise came because he'd dropped his guard with the lovely and delectable Maya Sanchez. She'd lowered her weapon, gave him an enthusiastic hug which he'd returned as emphatically, gave him a passionate kiss he'd responded to with equal ardor and then had nearly changed his singing voice from baritone to soprano.
x
"So, what's for this evening?"
"Twentieth Century," Rosen calls out.
"Low Tech," is Klugmann's vote, ignoring that the first choice of milieu pretty much guarantees the latter. Columns of tiny words appear on the deck to overhead screen, too numerous and tiny to read.
"Flying," is Belknap's selection and most of the words disappear, the others moving to fill the space but still too many to discern.
"Rescues," Paul Darrow at Life Sciences wants. Still hundreds more words vanish, the remainder now large enough to read.
"Hunks!" is Sportelli's emphatic selection.
'Figures,' M'Goya thinks, but he won't hold the choice against her. There are still in excess of sixty selections and he studies the list, makes his choice.
It commences with greyscale footage of an ancient two person air ship with clear spherical chamber for the crew, a long framework to the rear of the ship and its steadying propeller plus a huge one above to provide lift. The airship is seen from multiple angles, always in flight.
The music is stirring, promising exciting activity. A circle appears in the center of the screen into which a single word approaches, stops and proclaims 'WHIRLYBIRDS', followed immediately by the names Kenneth TOBEY and Craig HILL.
As the activity begins, all in gray scale, Darrow inquires "How old is this thing?"
"1958," Belknap replies, having checked the data at his board.
"462 years."
"You can choose the next one," M'Goya promises.
"In color."
"Hush!" is Sportelli's final word.
xxx
"Chaplain's Log, December 23, 2420. I couldn't resist," Crystal says at her living room desk, or so she's begun to think of it. There's something about the passing star stuff, the Doppler rainbows that relaxes one. 'If I'm not careful, I'll drift off out here.'
"I went down to the Holodeck and made my choice for tomorrow. I can access, create, almost all of the grand and most impressive churches and cathedrals in history (Earth history for now), and after thirty or forty choices I made the perfect selection for my first Eucharist on Orville.
"Okay, I gave in to temptation. I'm sure He'll forgive me. I said Evening Prayer there with the Angels and Saints.
"You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I asked for a Bible and a Book of Common Prayer and the Holodeck gave them to me.
"They vanished when everything else did of course, but for that time … it was pretty darn impressive."
x
She turns the recording off and for the first time has no thought to delete it.
xxx
Kitan, hours later and in the yellow blouse and blue skirt she'd worn since change of shift, has finished checking the systems she and her 'associates' have made to ensure that no one can change the ship's heading or arrival time. Satisfied that she at least has been diligent, she makes her way along the main deck to her quarters behind the Bridge, occupied now by the Gamma Shift officers. It's an hour into the night shift and Ens. R. J. Mace occupies her station, but she has no desire to see him. She's within a meter of the door when "Hi, Alara" from behind halts her. She turns to the green jacketed redhead.
"Yes, hello." The woman doesn't look familiar, she's sure she hasn't seen this face on any of the briefing files.
"How was your day?"
There's something in her tone that Kitan doesn't like, as though the woman already knows the answer. "Eh, okay."
"Looked pretty okay a few hours ago," the intrusive jelnazi, seemingly close to her own age and far too cheery for this hour, says with a smile that says too much and not enough.
"Ah, it was okay. How was yours?"
"Fine. Better than I'd thought it would be. The School kids were marvelous."
'She's a teacher, that explains the open book as her Division badge and why wasn't I informed?' "Great."
"I saw you and Lt. Malloy earlier in the lounge. I didn't want to come over and intrude. You looked a lot happier."
"Of course, we're happy."
"And I see you're a lot more comfortable wearing the tal-med."
"Huh?" Kitan touches one flickering end with her fingertips. After her dinner with the pilot she hadn't taken it off - what difference does the idiot Security Chief's reputation mean to her, especially now? - but she should have been more alert to her surroundings, such as this nosy kirchatz. "Well… why wouldn't I be?"
"I'm sorry, but when Lieutenant Malloy gave it to you, you said you were very uncomfortable about the message it sent, that you would never wear it again in public, then when I saw you in the lounge –"
"I changed my mind," Kitan cuts in hurriedly. She looks fore and aft along the corridor but it's too long an unbroken path and there are a few crewmen and -women visible, each going about his or her business.
x
Crystal is unsure. Alara seems very distracted, talks in starts and doesn't meet her eyes, but then the Xelayan asks
"Would you like to come inside? I'd like to talk to you."
'Oh, it's more about Lt. Malloy. Of course.' "Sure."
Alara leads her inside and Crystal focuses on a brief prayer that God will open her mind and heart and give her the words to say, and when the portal closes the Security Chief crosses the room to the Synthesizer nitch. "Two Sicaran Sunbursts."
When she returns with the glasses, half filled with red liquid, Crystal looks at them but makes no move to take either. "Is that alcohol?"
"Guaranteed to knock you on your ass before you finish the first glass, and an endless supply to follow," Kitan assures her, handing her one. "Drink up. Time to discuss guys."
"Alara, I told you yesterday I don't touch alcohol; that even the Communion wine is unfermen–."
Kitan grabs her by the green jacket and both glasses fly outward, their contents splattering as she yanks Crystal off her feet into a spin that has her pinwheel level with the deck. Crystal's startled scream jumps to a shriek as Kitan flings her across the room and it's cut by her cataclysmic crash against the bulkhead beside the wide monitor.
She neither feels herself crash into the steel wall nor slam face up upon the deck.